William Kent

PhD Student

Will is a PhD student in the Department of Psychology. He graduated from the University of Chester in 2015 with a Psychology Honours Degree. Will's PhD will investigate the development of an intervention for work-related stress in oncology healthcare professionals. Will also works for a mental health organisation called Making Space, providing support to clients with a range of mental health diagnoses. Will also co-facilitates a Recovery Group with a Clinical Psychologist, for patients at a rehabilitation hospital provided by Making Space.

Teaching

Will has taught as a Study Skills Facilitator for the University of Chester, delivering 'Academic Success seminars' to Psychology undergraduates. Seminars included a range of topics, from critical evaluation and essay writing skills, to statistics workshops.

Research

Will's research will explore work-related stress in oncology healthcare professionals. This will involve the development and testing of an intervention to reduce occupational stress in those health carers (specifically cancer nurses). The intervention will be based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) – one of the third-wave therapies.

The intervention will be empirically tested to illustrate its effectiveness in the clinical setting. Current literature states that decreases in work-related stress can improve the standard of care a patient receives. Future stages of the PhD will therefore investigate how reductions in work-related stress (due to ACT) can improve the standard of care those nurses deliver to their patients.

Will is also a member of the Chester Research Unit for the Psychology of Health (CRUPH), specifically the Psycho-Oncology research team, and the Contextual Behavioural Science lab. He is also also Student Representative on the Executive Committee for the British Psychosocial Oncology Society (BPOS), and is a member of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS).